A number of years ago a Catholic friend of mine gave me a beautiful bookmark with a prayer by Francis of Assisi. Although I am not Catholic, I appreciate the spirit in which the bookmark was given, and the more…

I think that Americans in general want everything done in a hurry. Maybe that’s why so many of us have cell phones, microwaves, air conditioning, central heating, and fuel-injected engines. We want it done NOW. So, if things don’t always…

In April of 1975 the communist Cambodian army (known as the Khmer Rouge) finally overwhelmed and conquered the pro-Western Cambodian army (ostensibly backed by the United States). The communists entered the capital city and immediately began implementing their concept of…

Art is a window to the soul. For thousands and thousands of years, human beings have looked at their world and tried to capture its beauty or terror or confusion or humor in some form of art. From the wall…

The Spanish philosopher George Santayana is often quoted as “those who fail to learn from the past, repeat it.” It is the lesson of history. If history is not being taught to each generation (our children), then eventually we will…

The blessings of Medieval education? Are you crazy??? In the medieval world all people studied was how to turn iron into gold, discussed how many angels danced on the head of a pin, and believed that the world was flat,…

If you live in the United States, Canada, Japan, the Republic of China (Taiwan), Australia, New Zealand, or any Western European nation, then you are living better than any king, emperor, or dictator from the mid-20th century to the dawn…

In 1931 Joseph Stalin ordered that the kulaks “be liquidated as a class.” Over the next three years an estimated six million Soviet subjects who were called “kulaks” were shot, starved to death, or sent off to slave labor camps…

Do you like the idea of free schools for the public? Do the ideas of earning a degree in an accredited university appeal to you? (Yes I know that schools today, in many ways, have terribly departed from their original…

Where did hospitals come from? Medical clinics? Orphanages? Centers to treat the mentally ill? Rehabilitation clinics? Did these pop up in China, India, or among the indigenous peoples of South America one day? No. All these great medical institutions that…